[Koha-devel] Koha Foundation

[Russel Garlick]

Hi all,

I'll chime in on this :-)

>>
>> Over the past few weeks we've discussed the idea of forming a Koha
>> Foundation -- a non-profit organization for Koha. 
> 
> I already said to joshua I think it's a good time to build a NPO now.
> 

I agree. I have done some looking around at other projects, and have 
talked to a few people involved in other open source projects and 
librarians here. It seems that having a foundation or similar adds to 
the credibility of a project.

> What could be it's goal ?
> "provide open source solutions for all tasks a library does daily".
> 
> What could be it's services :
> * coordinate user requests ? i'm not sure, as we have some companies 
> already doing this. And I would not see the projet slowed by too much 
> administrations.
> * secure the Koha name. For sure a good idea ! "koha" MUST be a 
> non-profit term. katipo as well as liblime as well as me don't use 
> "koha" as their business name. And it must be kept as it !
> * promote OSS solutions in libraries.
> * be owner of the copyright.
> 
The copyright of what? This might be tricky and something that we need 
to work through. Not a deal breaker in my book, but given the nature of 
the way the software has been developed (numerous contributors) this 
could be hard to set up. But this isn't my field.

> plus some technical services :
> * provide things like backup servers, opensearchportal for all koha 
> installs, ...
> 

I think we have some growing pains happening here. To date the project 
has been run fairly loosely. But with more development comes more 
complexity and the harder and more time consuming the roles of release 
manager, release maintainer, and kaitiaki become.

With that in mind, here is my take at some broad goals
- Ensuring that the Koha project is ongoing and vital (full of life).
- To facilitate ways the Koha community can work together

Some other goals/ thoughts
- Reassurance that Koha is bigger than a couple of vendors and is not 
tied into their success and failure
- A vehicle to seek funding for
	- further development of features
	- Future Koha user/developer conferences/ user group meetings.
	- usability/ accessibilty studies
	- more translations/localisation
	- deployment/adoption in developing countries (partnering with other 
oss projects and hardware vendors) - Probably a long term goal, but the 
NPO could open up these possibilities.
	- Kaitiaki (guardianship) role - recoginses the importance of this role 
and the amount of time it takes (would make sense to move this role to NPO.

I am sure I can think of more :-) But that is a start and an indication 
of my thinking anyway.

Cheers
Russel


-- 

Russel Garlick
Operations Manager
Katipo Communications
Ph:  +64 4 934 1285
Fax: +64 4 934 1286
Mob: +64 27 537 1377
Skype: russelgarlick
Web http://www.katipo.co.nz